Tag Archives: biphasic sleep

Making naps popular

Ever since SXSW I’ve rethought a lot of what it is I’m doing, what my priorities are, etc. I’ve also noticed that every night I get home from work and I’m tired. Crazy huh? I also get hungry at lunch time.

But seriously, I hate getting home and not feeling motivated to do anything else. So, I’ve gone back to something I perfected in college: napping.

At the time, biphasic and polyphasic sleep were being (re)discovered online. I stopped taking naps after I started my big-boy job out of college. But now, I realize, it’d be great to take a nap and start a ‘second day’ every night.

So my schedule is as follows:

08:00 AM – Wake up, go to work, etc.
06:00 PM – Leave work, have dinner, etc.
08:00 PM – Sleep
11:00 PM – Wake up, start ‘second day’ (read, watch movies, blog, etc.)
05:00 AM – Go to sleep

My body is, luckily, still used to the 80-90 minute sleep cycles so I can get away with two chunks of 3 hours and feel energized all day.

Two days in and I’ve hit the ground running. I’m pretty stoked. If you have any questions and want to try biphasic sleep / naps just leave a comment.

Biphasic Sleep (Napping) FAQ

63 Replies

I keep getting asked a few of the same questions so I thought I’d take a post to gather my thoughts on biphasic sleeping, also known as napping.

1. You sleep… when exactly?

I sleep twice in a day. The first time being sometime in the early evening (around 8:30) and this block of sleep is only for 90 minutes (at least, thats the plan, see #4). After my first block of sleep I’m extremely refreshed and ready to go another few hours. I set myself to be back up by about 6 so I either go to sleep again at 1:30a or 3a. Note these are in 90 minute increments again.

2. What does 90 minutes have to do with anything?

The 90-minute cycle actually refers to one complete sleep cycle. This includes going through REM sleep; the most important part of sleeping. Since I don’t force myself to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle I’m much more refreshed and it’s much easier to actually get up.

3. Is it hard to get up at 6 every day?

Surprisingly, no. I used to have trouble getting up at 8 or even 9 every day. I’m convinced it was because I was constantly pulling myself up out of the middle of a sleep cycle. Our brains get stuck down in ‘sleep world’ and have a hard time unnaturally coming back up.

4. Do you ever screw up your sleeping schedule?

On occasion, yes. It’s funny but sometimes I’ll mis-set my alarm and find myself taking a 3 or 4.5 hour nap. I actually wake up naturally at 3 or 4.5 hours. I smile because people who thought I’d be ‘back in a few’ or would ‘call them in an few hours’ end up going to sleep that night slightly confused. They know its something nap-related. Oh well. I just adjust my second sleep period. For example, last night I went to bed at 9:30p and woke up at 2a. Oops! I ended up working until 5a, slept until 6:30 and, well, here I am! I had a midterm at 9:30 and have felt fine all day.

5. Do you ever sleep in?

To me, “sleeping in” is anything more than 6 hours. My body is pretty good at waking itself up automatically after a REM cycle (end of a 90 minute increment). On Saturdays I treat myself to 7.5 or 9 hours of sleep. People who advocate 8 hours of sleep are nuts. Seriously.

6. Does this interfere with your (social) life?

Nope. If I’m not in a place where I can’t just decide to take a nap then I simply don’t that day. I will just sleep 6 or 7.5 hours that evening and pick back up the next day. It seems like the simplest solution and hasn’t given me any problems. I do start to yawn quite a bit though as the night wears on..

7. Are there any side effects?

Increased productivity, smaller todo piles, less magazines to read on my bookshelf (hopefully this will carry over to books). But seriously, there have been no medical side effects whatsoever. This is far from anything radical like polyphasic sleeping.

8. Would you try polyphasic sleeping?

I’ll try anything. I don’t see it as something feasable for me at any point in my life. I may be wrong though. If I ever have the ability to control my schedule like that (30m naps every 4h) then sure, I’ll give myself a month or so to try it out.

9. Where did you even hear about this?

I find neat stuff online. This happens to be one of those things…

Biphasic Sleep Update

10 Replies

I’ve survived week one of my biphasic sleep schedule. Before I started my new routine I would get probably 8 or 9 hours of sleep per night. Last night I settled with 4.5. Here’s how the last 7 days looked:

Day	Nap	Sleep	Total
1	8:30-12	2-6	7.5 hours
2	6:30-8	2-8	7.5 hours
3	7:30-10	2-6	6.5 hours
4	8:30-4	*	7.5 hours
5	7-8:30	2-6:30	6.0 hours
6	8:30-10	2-6	5.5 hours
7	1-5:30	*	4.5 hours

As you can see I started to get less sleep… then day 4 hit me. I got back from skiing that day and went to take my nap… and didn’t wake up until 4am. That was fine, I woke up and proceeded to begin my day. I guess I was pretty exhausted, though.

Yesterday (day 7) I was very busy. Up at 6, class at 8 then work until 3:30, group project, meeting, dinner, meeting and I was finally home by 9. The problem was I had not started any homework and it needed to be done. So, I worked through my nap time and just decided to do the one block of sleep. That went pretty well. I woke up this morning but was a little drowsy. I lied down and watched MTV until about 6:30.

…and here I am working through my nap again. Oddly enough with 4.5 hours of sleep and no nap yet I’m feeling great. A little more irritable (thanks computer!) but not tired at all. I intend to repeat last night’s schedule and then go back to naps tomorrow afternoon.

I really recommend trying this sleep schedule. Waking up is easier. My dreams are more memorable, vivid and lucid (I feel like I control them, it’s weird). Working during the peace of night is great, too. I caught up on 12 magazines, I’ve started a new web project (looking forward to sharing that soon) and watched some good movies. Life is good!

PIP: Personal Improvement Project

4 Replies

I’ve started what I call my ‘PIP’ or ‘Personal Improvement Project’. The new year has sparked a lot of change already. So far I’ve dropped BusinessBits, established my own domain and completely reorganized my workspace.

But now I’m on to bigger things.

As mentioned the other day, I’ve started a biphasic sleep schedule. I went to sleep two nights ago at 1am (in order to ween myself into it) and woke up at 6. Last night I napped from 8:30p-10p … and then again from 10:03-midnight. Oops. I think my body doesn’t yet realize what I’m doing, which is fine… I expected this. Anyway, I got up at midnight, got some things done and went back to bed at 2. This morning I was back up at 6. I plan to try the nap again tonight.

My ultimate goal is to get through four sleep cycles each day. This means I hit REM sleep three times at night and then once during my nap. I wake up immediately after the cycle is complete. Now, I’ve read that most people’s cycles are about 90 minutes long but it looks like mine are only about 75 minutes long. I’ve discovered this now having looked back at the two times I woke up without an alarm. Going back to my goal, four cycles equates to five hours of sleep. From what I’ve read, this could be more than plenty.

So, I’m going to adjust a bit and see how things go. Technically I’m on my second day and I’m not feeling tired or anything.

Sleep Cycles

4 Replies

I admit, I got a little burned out at work today (8 hours in front of the monitor, no lunch, pretty tough). So, I took a break and read a bit about polyphasic sleep on Steve Pavlina’s blog. I then dug around more and more and read some wikis and all sorts of articles. I’ve decided to embark on Glen Rhodes’ bi-phasic sleep pattern and see how it works for me. I’ve never been much for sleeping a lot, but I’ve never really understood why I’m tired one day and just fine another. I’m looking into how I can schedule a routine 90-minute nap every day and then get 6 hours of sleep every night. The sleep cycles seem to make sense. If I get up at 6:30 every morning I could probably get a lot done in a day. Look out breakfast, I’m making a come-back..